Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Hank Behrman

Hank Behrman pitched for the Dodgers, Pirates and Giants in the late forties.

After a very good rookie season in 1946, his performance tailed off so badly in 1947 that he was sold off to the Pirates....and returned after posting a 9.00+ ERA in 10 games.

He recovered in 1948 for the Dodgers enough for the Giants to purchase his rights in 1949, but a 4.92 ERA and a 2:1 walk to strikeout ratio for that season ended his time up top. His Baseball-Reference page ends his transaction section there, but he was involved in a few more deals, we found.

“Both were released to Oakland of the Pacific Coast League
by the National League Club.”

“Durocher said that by sending Behrman and Zimmerman to
Oakland, the Giants have obtained an option on purchasing Bill Taylor,
left-handed hitting outfielder, at the end of the current PCL championship
season.”

So the deal was for selling Behrman and the formerly-blackballed (for jumping to the Mexican League) Zimmerman to independent Oakland, Leo Durocher and the Giants would get right of first refusal on Taylor, who they later DID purchase. Taylor has an interesting set of transactions too, we will get to them later.

Behrman plays in 1951 in three places, Oakland, San Francisco and AA Oklahoma City. The Oklahoma trip must have been a look-see, because otherwise the next two deals I found make no timeline sense.

“San Francisco’s cellar-dwelling Seals shelled out ‘in
excess of $10,000’ yesterday for a righthander who earned 17 victories for
their cross-bay rivals, the Oakland Acorns, last year.”

“He is Hank Behrman…”

Despite the trip to Oklahoma City, of which I was unable to find a reason, Behrman is still San Francisco property when he is sold to Toledo, of the White Sox system. From the Toledo Blade of Feb. 27, 1952:

“The Mud Hens, whose financial troubles were slated to be
ironed out today, continued to move on the pitching front by the purchase of
Hank Behrman, former major league right-hander, from San Francisco.”

Unfortunately those financial problems were NOT totally ironed out and the team moved to Charleston during the season (by American Association mandate). After one more sub-par season on the mound, Behrman's career was over. SABR has a nice biography of Behrman you should check out.